When it comes to chick flicks and romantic comedies, the sad truth is that the main appeal of most is pure sentimentality. The girl gets the guy, the guy gets the girl, and they live happily ever after. As much as the entire story is constructed by the obstacles that hinder that perfect ending, often they are shown to be no more than circumstantial. In the end, resolution is no more complex than the flip of a switch, a light bulb realization that requires nothing more than reaching out to whoever or whatever is within a two foot radius.

But in this summer's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the film, while still sentimental, gives us a movie that recognizes both the simple truth of what love is and the complex realities that are almost always a part of actually being able to grasp it.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 picks up three years after The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants left off. Best friends Carmen (America Ferrera), Lena (Alexis Bledel), Bridget (Blake Lively), and Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) have just finished their first year of college and are about to embark on their various summer adventures. Carmen is off to the theater, Lena art class, Tibby summer school, and Bridget an archeological dig. But as before, each woman's summer plans serve up far more than expected.

When Lena discovers that her ex-boyfriend Kostas (Michael Rady) has gotten married only months after they broke up, she finds herself stuck between her desire to have true love in her life and her fear of ever having to feel that kind of pain again. After Tibby allows herself to get closer to her boyfriend Brian (Leonardo Nam) than ever before, she struggles with what it actually means to be close and trust someone to be that close. When Carmen is literally pushed from the wings onto center stage, she finds herself forced to rethink her own sense of value and belonging. And as Bridget digs up bones in Turkey, it is instead her own past which comes to the surface, and her continued struggle with the loss of her mother which takes her on an unplanned side trip.

In the movie, Lena's story is the most standard. From the beginning, we know where she is supposed to end up. And while her story is the last to resolve, in the end, it is more of a light bulb realization than anything else. Yes, true love does exist. If we find it, we better hold onto it. And even though the possibility of its loss may make us feel like settling for something less is a safer bet, it's still worth it.

In the scheme of things, Lena's story is the movie's basic truth, a simple definition of love and exemplification of its value. From there, the other women's stories take off to explore the more difficult complexities of actually being able to grasp that value.

Through Carmen's story, we see what is perhaps one of the most difficult (and common obstacles) to letting love into our lives—actually seeing ourselves as worthy of it. When the handsome British actor Ian (Tom Wisdom) tells Carmen that she should be on stage instead of behind it, she tells him, "I'm pretty sure I'm where I belong." But when she is cast as Perdita in The Winter's Tale, that belief is challenged. And when an offstage romantic misunderstanding upsets Carmen's newfound sense of confidence, we see how much our sense of value and our ability to be loved are intertwined.

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